Another Wednesday brings us to another Xbox update. What's been going on? Well, Yo ho Kablammo is now available on XBLA and will tickle your funny bone. Plus there are some updates about games in development as well as some Xbox rantings.

XBLA release

There were two releases for XBLA this week – Defense Grid and Yo ho Kablammo! Much as the former is a addictive little number, I am not as enthusiastic about it for the console. This has more to do with me playing strategy games on consoles (dammit, where are my shortcuts!). Plus I think I went on about the game a little bit last week ... which brings us to the next release.

Yo ho Kablammo is a little known game developed by Canal Studios. I am tempted to call it cutenes overload (and I mean this in a 'I know I'm going to be hooked to this for hours' way) but the game is a bit more hardcore. Much more so as a matter of fact. Underneath the pretty graphics hides hectic sea battles and piratey goodness. Thus, you get various types of ships whereby you hoist your sails and set off to find treasure. Oh and did I mention high-paced cannon blasts at other ships? Scuttle that ship, pow pow!  

By the way, I found a little bit of background information about this game. Apparently it was one of the XNA games that was submitted for the Dream-Build-Play Contest in 2007. Yo ho Kablammo was one of the games that won over the judges and was chosen for publication on XBLA.

Check it out, it's available for 800 MS points.

Upcoming game

Sadly, I couldn't get too excited about this upcoming title - Military Madness: Nectaris, which is no entirely fair, given how it is a good game. This game falls into two genres that are outside my interest – military shoot-em-up (because of blah-factor) and strategy genre (because of its irreconcilable differences with a console setting).

After raining on your parade a bit, let me point out the good news. MM is coming to XBLA by the end of this month and this promises to be a jazzed up version of the original. This means that, while it stays true to the original story, it will feature modern graphics that will win over the younger crowds. Not all together a bad idea; it worked nicely for Monkey Island. So far it seems set at 800 MS points.

Industry news

This tidbit will be of interest to game designer hopefuls in US. Microsoft has paired up with snack giant Doritos (or at least their company branch) and come up with a grand little contest. Called "Unlock Xbox", this contest offers users the chance to create a game design involving the Dorito-based munchies. Seems like there will be a few rounds but, in the end, two winners will see their games hooked up on XBLA as DLC.

Seems like the anger towards Games on Demand keeps building up. The latest hiccup involved downloadable games that were not available to a number of key gaming regions. Thus in this case, recently released Splinter Cell D.A. was not accessible to folks in Australia, Germany, Japan, Korea, New Zealand or North America and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter snubs gamers in Australia, Korea or New Zealand. Hear those voices shouting in rage? You know where it is coming from.

A lot of countries have significant number of gamers now and it's neither right nor fair to target one over the other. Let's not forget that the whole concept of instant access over internet is lost when people implement geospatial restrictions like these. This surely is a steadfast way for Games on Demand to attain a fail tag. MS should know that once you land a nasty tag, it is hard to get rid of it.